Windows XP Pro Activation Troubles

[Spunkey]

Hi All,

Being the good son i am i built a new pc for my dad the other week. He said he'd like to get into computers a bit more, so asked if i could do the building and let him install windows. So i said ok, but i still left him full written instructions.

Anyway, upshot of that stupid idea is that when i wrote down how to activate windows, my dad thought i meant register it and post the card off *slaps head*

Now the 30 days have expired and he cant log in.

The beef is though, that when it comes up "Windows has been used for 30 days and must be activated, do you wish to activate now? etc." when you click yes, nothing happens, you get logged out and taken back to the login screen showing the usernames. This is really annoying and turning a simple activation job into a complete PITA.

Anyone had this before? any ideas?

TIA!!

[Steve]

Is he using a non-administrative account or something? That might prevent him activating it... although to be quite honest that's just a guess.

[Daymonkey]

going on from what kez has said, have you tryed booting into safe mode and then logging into Administrator and activate from there.

[Kezzer]

Are you connected to the internet?

[Steve]

It should give you the option to active by phone though KeZZeR, shouldn't it?

[bouncin]

yep it should take u to a screen which offers u the option to do things by phone or over the net.

[Spunkey]

Thanks for the replies all!

I ended up doing a clean install and after that it worked. God knows what happened the first time round, but it had its panties in a right bunch.

Cheers!